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Claude Estee
History Involved with giving roles at the Studio, he auditions characters for roles and is in a position of power. He is infatuated with Frankie but it is unclear if the relationship is mutual. In ‘The Drowned Man’, he’s a studio producer. He’s married to Alice, another executive, but is infatuated with a young actor called Frankie. He’s slimy and deceitful, and leers at men and women alike. In the Drafting Room, the file on Claude lists him as ‘Producer (Witch)’. It notes that his main aim is ‘to get Frankie’. One of his duties is to enlist people into the Freemasons. Appearance Wears a brown suit and a Fedora hat, occasionally wearing costume, and has slicked-back hair. Loop - Basic - Casting dance with Alice (Secretary's Office) - Auditions Faye with Mr. Stanford (Audition Room) - Watches Andrea audition with William (Audition Room) - Shares pill with Doctor (Corridors) - Spinning box dance with Dolores (Dressing Room) - Auditions Frankie with Alice (Studio 5) - Goes down to basement for initiation (Corridors) - Gets changed into black suit and mask (Recorder Room Office) - Frankie's initiation (Masonic Temple Room) - Gets changed out of black suit and mask (Recorder Room Office) - Dances on table surrounded by photos of Frankie (Boardroom) - Watches Andrea and Frankie dance (backstage Studio 5) - Fawns over Frankie (Basement Corridor) - Attends orgy (Masonic Temple Room) - Tries to seduce Frankie (Masonic Temple Room) - Dances over photos (Basement Corridor) - Tears up picture of Frankie (Shredding Room) - Hides while Andrea dances (Small Snow Room) - Carries Andrea into dressing room (Dressing Room) Loop - Extended Claude’s wife, Alice, is in the Secretary’s Office speaking into an old-fashioned phone. Claude enters and they dance around the desk, while looking through headshots of actors and dismissing them out of hand. They spin around on their chairs, sliding back and forth behind the desk. A photograph of Marshall hangs on the wall behind them and they tear it down. ‘He’s the one’ they nod and they have their patsy. Claude moves to a sleazy auditioning suite with a small checkerboard stage. He meets the boss of the studio, Mr Stanford, and they’re joined by Faye Greener, a hopeful young actress. Faye gets up onto the stage to perform Shirley Temple’s ‘At the Codfish Ball’. Mr Stanford sits in a leather armchair drinking whisky with Claude by his side. Claude is feeling frisky and he joins Faye on the stage. He starts to wrestle with her and she nervously pushes him away. She does enough to impress the boss and gets her part. Next it’s Andrea’s turn and Claude continues to abuse his authority. Mr Stanford has moved on and so Claude watches alone from the leather armchair. The voice of Mr Stanford directs the action and he says he wants to see ‘love at first sight’. He wants to intense passion, as if she’s been ‘electrocuted’. She needs a partner to bounce off and Mr Stanford asks, ‘Can we get someone up there please?’ In the shadows at the side of the room, William is carrying out his duties as janitor. He’s tidying up and trying to ignore Andrea’s ordeal. Claude gestures for him to perform with the young starlet. He resists, but Claude is determined to demean him. Mr Stanford progresses the story, ‘Let me see jealousy. He’s a cheat. You can smell her. You can smell her on him!’ Andrea smells William’s collar. ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Reluctantly, Andrea slaps him. She slaps him again and gets carried away. Claude is delighted, and William runs off, humiliated. Claude moves on and shares a pill with The Doctor in a corridor. He meets Dolores in the Main Dressing Room, and they flirt together, their manner theatrical and affected. They dance around a wardrobe rack on wheels, climbing inside and spinning it around. Dolores is in a dressing gown and straw bonnet, with her head thrown back and laughing. Claude puts on a white fez and jokes about the ‘Tunnel of Love’. He steps out of the cage and spins it more violently, with Dolores still inside. She’s scared and Claude spins it faster and faster. She laughs, but is badly shaken and begs him to stop. He walks to Studio 5 where his psychotic wife, Alice, is with a young actor, Frankie, on the locker room set. She’s telling him how fantastic he is. Claude walks up to them clapping loudly and the two executives proceed to ‘audition’ the boy. Fawning over him, they claw at his skin. Alice has a schoolgirl crush, but Claude is infatuated. After a harrowing double frontal assault, they tell Frankie that he’s a star and it’s time to meet the boss. Claude walks ahead and goes down to the Basement. He enters a room containing a reel-to-reel tape recorder and gets changed into a black suit and mask. He walks out to the Masonic Temple Hall and takes part in ‘Frankie’s Initiation’ with Mr Stanford, Alice and Dolores. He’s in love with Frankie, but studio protocol comes first. For Frankie to be accepted into the fold, it seems he needs to be tormented and broken. Claude gets changed out of his black suit and goes upstairs to the Boardroom. His infatuation with Frankie is getting worse. He lays down cast photographs in a circular pattern on the table and they’re all of Frankie. Lonely and frantic, he stands in the middle of them, obsessing over the boy. He presses a crumpled headshot into the hand of an audience member and kisses it. He hands out more photos as he walks down the corridor. He stalks around backstage in Studio 5 while the ‘Infidelity Ballet’ is being played out by Wendy, Andrea and Frankie. He pauses at a photograph of Romola above a shrine and sticks his fingers into her eyes. He watches Andrea and Frankie dance together in a fake strip bar, and when the shoot is over, he approaches Andrea and gives her an invite to Mr Stanford’s staff party. Her eyes light up, and he pulls out a second one, ‘For Wendy’. He follows Frankie into the corridor and fawns over him. He returns to the Basement, where attends Mr Stanford’s staff party. He joins in the orgy and simulates sex with Frankie on top of a banquet table. He’s ravenous and Frankie is increasingly uncomfortable. When the party ends, Frankie has had enough - he erupts and violently chokes him. They fight and kiss and roll on the ground. Claude slides off Frankie’s body and swims and slithers on his belly. Frankie gets away and Claude continues to writhe around in the middle of the checkerboard floor, with only a couple of audience members watching him. Most of the audience has moved on after the party, making the scene all the more surreal. Claude gets up from the floor and dusts himself off. Frustrated, he walks to Mr Stanford’s office. The desk is covered with eyeless headshots and in the centre of the room is a headshot of Frankie, hanging on a clipboard under a spotlight. He pulls down the photo and replaces it with a photo of Dolores. He holds the image of Frankie next to the masked face of an audience member. He rasps and rips the photograph to pieces, pressing them into the man’s hand, ‘It’s time to set things right. It’s time for things to get back to how they should be.’ Andrea is dancing in a small snow-covered room next to Studio 4, when a sinister shadow appears through a doorway, projected onto the snow. Claude reveals himself in the opening and Andrea is terrified. She collapses to the floor and he gently embraces her. He carries her tenderly into the Main Dressing Room. He lowers her body down onto a stool and kisses her on the mouth. The Fool is behind them, watching aghast. Final Show Trivia In ‘The Day of the Locust’, Claude Estee is a successful Hollywood screenwriter As a Hollywood big shot, Claude is inundated with letters and proposals from desperate actors. They can be found throughout the studios in several of the offices. There is a pile of them on a ‘Lost and Found’ shelf in the Studio Reception in the Basement. One is from a mother called Maybelle Loomis. She wants her talented daughter ‘Adore’, a potential Shirley Temple, to be considered for an audition. In ‘The Day of the Locust’, Maybelle Loomis is a typical stage mother, ‘one of that army of women who drag their children from casting office to casting office and sit for hours, weeks, months, waiting for a chance to show what Junior can do’. Many of the scenes and sets in the Basement are reminiscent of films by David Lynch. Maxine Doyle claims that Lynch is one of Punchdrunk’s biggest influences, and references to his work can be found throughout the building. The red curtains and checkerboard floor are similar to a set in ‘Twin Peaks’ and there’s a theatre in ‘Mullholland Drive’ called ‘Club Silencio’ that uses the same eerie imagery. The soundtrack used at the staff party, ‘The Pink Room’, is from ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’, and Mr Stanford is similar to ‘Mr Roque’, a mysterious, wheelchair-bound studio boss from ‘Mulholland Drive’. The main character in ‘Mullholland Drive’ is ‘Betty’, a bright newcomer to Los Angeles and the Hollywood system. Her audition scene, and the coercion of the director, is like Andrea’s audition for Claude at Temple Studios. In the film, Betty becomes corrupted and is replaced by ‘Diane’ who’s story is similar to that of Wendy. Lynch’s film ‘Inland Empire’ from 2006 is also appropriated. Nikki is an actress who plays a character called ‘Sue’. By the end of the film, Nikki has become Sue. As she walks down Hollywood Boulevard, she’s brutally stabbed in the stomach with a screwdriver. Off-camera, a director yells ‘Cut’ and the camera pans back to show that it’s merely a scene in a film. Like Lynch’s work, ‘The Drowned Man’ plays with the notion of ‘temporal distortion’ – a common technique in modern fiction that involves non-linear narratives, fragmentation and distortions in time. This technique also reflects the fragmented nature of the original ‘Woyzeck’. Quotes "How do I look?" References Played By Anwar Russell, Omar Gordon, Ira Siobhan, David Essing, Fred Gehrig, Luke Birch, Carl Harrison and River Carmalt. Category:Characters